Enjoying the book thus far. Really gives practical information about what it is like to try to live on minimum wage.

I have to admit, I grew up as person of privilege. I am from a large home in suburbia and drove a Mercedes SUV to high school every day. I was always taught to appreciate the things you have, and how lucky I am. Being born into wealth doesn't take talent, it takes luck. Even being born in the United States alone takes luck, you only had a 5% chance of being born here.

This book reaffirmed my core belief that while hard work and brains can get you places, the effect of the starting hand your dealt cannot be denied. I have to admit I am pretty embarassed to read some of these reviews that blame the poor for their lot in life. Just because hard work can lead to success in this country, doesn't mean it happens 100% of the time.

Here's a big lesson I learned: tip everyone. One dollar to you might mean almost nothing, but for the working poor it means a whole lot more. Treat employees with compassion and respect. A lot of the poor conditions Dr. Ehrenreich experiences is because people are too self-absorbed to think of others. For example, when she's working as a maid in Maine, dripping sweat and the woman whose house she is cleaning doesn't even offer a glass of water. Instead, she commands Dr. Ehrenreich to clean floors on her hands and knees.

I did find the book to be a bit preachy at times, but really the overarching lessons here I think transcend politics. It's about human decency and compassion for your fellow man. Much of where you end up in life depends on the hand your dealt with from the start. The hand your dealt is all luck. Out of 6 billion people, why did I get to be born to wealthy parents in a great school district while another person of equal intelligence and integrity does not?

Anyway, this book is a must read for people of privilege in my opinion because it forces you to take a step back, count your blessings, and become more generous to fellow men and women.

I heard about this book through my reading teacher and a student a few months ago. Out of curiosity I decided to buy the book.
I really enjoyed it. I loved how it was written in a diary format and how the author was so real and blunt about everyone and everything she came in contact with.

Hopefully this book will wake up the country.

This was me! For those who reviewed the book and said that Ehrenreich was "unrealistic", I'm going to share my story. Several years ago my ex-boyfriend and I could have been in the book; we were each working a full-time job and he also had TWO part-time jobs at the same time (one after his full-time job and another on the weekends). Our jobs were in electronic sales at a big chain store and telemarketing which at the time paid $7.50 an hour. Yet we were still unable to make ends meet. After rent on our shoebox-efficieny apartment and utility bills, quarters for laundry and bus fare (we couldn't even afford a car! And even if we could have, we would not have been able to afford insurance AND gas.), we had hardly any money leftover for groceries and certainly NO money leftover for luxuries such as new clothes and new shoes (we did shop at thrift stores, but only when we really needed more outfits). After we ran out of selling our CDs, books, and magazines, which we sold for bus fare to be able to get to and from jobs, we resorted to selling plasma which paid $20 at the time and was enough for two weeks worth of groceries. Everything else that we owned, a mattress on the floor, linen, and kitchen supplies (which we deemed were the necessities) had all been purchased at a Goodwill also with the help of a friend of mine who worked there and used his employee discount for us.
I'm sure people would have thought my ex-boyfriend and I were lazy and "slackers" but we were working so HARD and pinching pennies and we couldn't understand why we still couldn't afford a nicer apartment, a car, decent clothes and to eat well. I shudder to think how much more of a hell our lives would have been if we had had children to boot!
Unfortunately the strain of our financial situation did our relatonship in. He moved back in with his single mother and I moved back in with my grandparents as we went our seperate ways. Sadly, living with my grandparents rent-free didn't really make my life easier. I was still working a minimum wage job and trying to save money while also helping them with expenses. Then the worst thing happened, I got another job in telemarketing and lost my voice completely two weeks into training which was followed by strep throat; this latest for a month! Needless to say I lost my job because I couldn't even make it through training. Of course I had no health insurance either. I realized there was no way I could ever afford a car to get a better job off the bus route or to move out into my own apartment anytime soon. Finally, I made the desperate decison to enlist in the Army.
My life is completely different now that I am out of the Army and a civilian again. From the Army I gained skills and knowledge in a specific field which are marketable and thanks to the Army College Fund and Montgomery G.I. Bill I am currently enrolled in a graduate program. Finanically I am better off now then I ever was in my life, but I never forget for a minute that I can end up again where I was before the Army, (selling plasma for food)...even with a Master's degree. Unfortunately there are countless reasons why some people would not be able to make the same decisions to join the military. For many people that is not an option. So where does that leave them?
I LOVE this book because I think it IS realistic and dead-on and I should know, I have lived it!

Gave the book as a gift...didn't read it but the reviews on it are great. I'm reviewing the bookseller. The book was here very quickly in excellent condition.

I was expecting this book to make us 'understand' ,not 'know', what it is like to be in a low wage job and more or less at the bottom of the economic chain. This book left a lot to be desired. The author never really 'lets go' and immerse herself in her situation. Rather, she stays high up on her perch, and passes judgment on everything that moves. How do we interpret her musings and thoughts and humor? Was it just to alleviate her pain arising from a situation (she makes fun of the 'rich' folks who employ 'poor' house-maids. While the humor was nice to read, what was she trying to convey in the page after page of sarcastic comments about the boss of the maid service? Wasn't he a product of the economic system as well?)
What I was looking forward to was someone who stood back and simply 'described', with the astute observational-eye of a Somerset Maugham or an R.K.Narayan - and let the reader interpret and judge. Instead the author fills the book with pages and pages of sarcasm and humor poked at someone or the other - management, the hotel owner (she even goes to describe problems with an East Indian marriage system !), the rich and even at the English language in Walmart's video material! The author behaves like a 'tourist' having a trip on her expensive car through 'poor town' and thinking that she is experiencing poverty. Poverty is more of a state of mind - of how the mind, in desperation, breaks down and accepts its surroundings without question. For some reason, the author simply finds this hard to understand and keeps questioning 'why the employees at Walmart don't form a union'.
Go ahead and the read the book - I do commend the author's courage in leaving her safe surroundings and living in poor conditions. But do not get swept away by the glowing reviews on the cover - they are by affluent reviewers who just want a vicarious peek at poverty.

This book was required summer reading before my freshman year at the University of Missouri. I was appalled to find after the first chapter or so a political undertone of liberals masquerading as journalists yet again.

Now I am a middle of the road individual, but my biggest pet peeve is when people are NOT UPFRONT with there intentions. It was the most hypocritical book I have ever read.

She does her best to point out how hard it is to get by on minimum wage with minimal education. She stays in these personas long enough to learn about her coworkers and show us how hopeless it is. Our lives are what we make of them not our jobs or money-I certainly hope I can not be reduced to a $ sign. Maybe if she lays off the drugs long enough she will stop blaming society for our problems and realize that it boils down to individual responsibility.

Author Barbara Ehrenreich spends a year as an experiment living on minimum wage and writing about it as a journalist. The book chronicles her year working in 3 states (Florida, Maine, and Minnesota) as, among other things, a waitress, maid, and Walmart employee. From the beginning she makes two caveats: that she has her own car (many minimum wage workers don't) and she won't go hungry (e.g. she will dip into her ATM before she will starve).

I thoughourly enjoyed this book. It was fascinating to see, fully see, another side of life that I thought I knew but really didn't. These people work hard, very hard, are good people, honest people and watch out for each other as best they can with what little they have.

Every dollar counts. I remember the Merry Maid who ate hot dog rolls brought from home for lunch because not only did she have no money, but no time since the work schedule was so tight. Decent housing is nearly impossible to find. All this and the author didn't even have to worry about chilcare costs. Everyone on minimum wage has to work at least two jobs to survive at even a subsistence level and live with friends, relatives, share a couch, a trailer. It's bad.

This book has changed my outlook toward minimum wage workers, made me a better tipper, and a much kinder and more thoughtful customer. I recommend it to anyone just as an aid to your humanity.

In my spare time, I enjoy reading about American problems and issues not directly known to the general audience. I found myself reading Nickel and Dimed, an intriguing story about an adventurous journalist going undercover, into the minimum wage world. Ehrenreich explores the working life of a maid, housekeeper, waitress, and Wal-Mart associate. Barbara shows how even in the best case scenario of being childless and healthy can create many obstacles and challenges. The main idea of this book is that every job requires a skill, no matter how low the wages are. Regardless of your specific field of work, you will be sure to encounter unreasonable management, difficult physical and mental labor, as well as pushy consumers or costumers. The bottom line is that rent and transportation is too expensive and minimum wage jobs simply will not support a person in the long run.

While Nickel and Dimed is not exactly the kind of book I can say that I enjoyed, it's definitely the kind of book I find informative and consciousness-raising. As a consequence of reading it, I will never see a Wal-Mart employee, hotel maid, house cleaner, or restaurant server in the same light as before. Ehrenreich's clear, direct writing pulls no punches as she gives the reader a realistic view of her under cover experiences working in a variety of minimum wage jobs.

Ehrenreiech, who has a Ph.D. in biology, approached her year of trying to live as a minimum wage employee the way that a scientist would. She even set up certain rules, two of which were that she would not fall back on any of her skills derived from education and that she would take the highest-paying job offered to her and do her best to hold it. By the way, the fact that she mentions her Ph.D. on more than one occasion evidently bothers some other reviewers and readers, but to me it added more credibility to her work. She not only had the credentials to carry out the research, but she actually did so. Another point that Ehrenreich makes is that regardless of education or intellect, there's still a learning curve for every job. Many times she felt inadequate, overwhelmed, and even disappointed in her ability (or inability) to do a job.

There are far too many situations that Ehrenreich described to enumerate them all, so I'll just mention a couple. Living conditions were horrendous for her (once there was sewage backed up and all over her floor), and yet many of her co-workers lived in cars, motel rooms, and flophouses. All of her jobs were eye-opening, but her stint as a maid in Maine was the most enlightening. One of my favorite passages in the book is when the owner of a million-dollar condo takes her into the bathroom and asks her to scrub the grout extra hard since the marble walls have been "bleeding" onto the brass fixtures. Ehrenreich restrains herself from telling the owner that it's the world-wide working class that's been bleeding as they quarried the marble, wove the Persian rugs until they went blind, smelted the steel for the nails, etc. I hope and pray (really) that conditions for Wal-Mart employees have improved since Ehrenreich's time there in 1998.

Read this book if you dare. I can guarantee that you'll never take your Chili's lunch, your automobile, your air conditioned home, your career, the nicely stocked shelves at Wal-Mart, or the fluffy towels in your hotel room for granted again.

Typically I'm skeptical of broad extrapolations based on anecdotal evidence, but Ehrenreich made that technique work in this book by supporting her observations with well-done research often dropped in as footnotes. The sense of desperation of the working poor is palpable. This book makes a statement about increasing class disparity in the US which is truly shameful.

I found Nickel and Dimed to be a good book. I read it for my ESL class and it helped me to improve my vocaburaly even though it was so hard at the beginning. It was amazing to realize how some Americans being Americans - as Barbara said in Nickel and Dimed - being white, English speakers, struggle in their own land with an unreasonable economic system. Barbara shows very well how poor workers are unable to live with their wages. The working class experience incredible and some times inhuman circumstances just to survive. Nickel and Dimed shows some of the terrible working conditions, and the result of them in most of those workers. It shows also how the same system is designed - in my opinion - not to help and assist these people.

My attitude about the book named "Nickel and Dimed" is that I think it is normal thing for me about how low wage-workers survive in their lives. They have to survive in the terrible situation because they have no choice. Poor people have to live in the car or small shelters incase they don't have their own house. They have to be insulted by many rich people. They are afraid to be fired because it is very difficult to find jobs. This information is not new for me. I think the strong part of this book is about the vocabulary. I can see how I improve my reading after reading this book. Because it is so difficult sentence and have a lot of vocabulary compared with other books. In the fact that I am an International student, it is difficult for me, but I think for American people, this book is very good. Barbara's sentences and detail can picture readers and express how she felt when she worked as the low-wage worker. I tell honestly that at the first time I buy this book, I think after I finish my study, I will ell it. Now I already change my mine. I want to keep this book and reread many time until I already master at reading. I string believe that this book can improve my reading. I am happy that my teacher uses this book for reading class. Thanks to my teacher, Heather. I can understand what you want from us.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is, by far, one of the best books that I have ever read. Ehrenreich is an extremely talented researcher and writer, and has a way with developing a connection with each and every one of her readers. In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich manages to include an abundance of intense information, while producing a very easy read.

Barbara Ehrenreich tells the tale of what it is like to live the life that many Americans are forced to live. Ehrenreich leaves her life as lecturer/public speaker/writer temporarily behind to live the life that many of us are all too familiar with...living from paycheck to paycheck, making "minimum" wage, folding clothes at the local Wal-Mart, having to make a million phone calls in order to get any financial assistance, and taking numerous drug tests in order to stock products on shelves. She lives in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, and works in various low wage jobs, including being a waitress at a diner, a maid, and a "team member" at Wal-Mart. She brilliantly communicates her many escapades and experiences living this life through complete wit and utter compassion. Ehrenreich offers conclusions and analysis of these living situations that will benefit her readers for years to come.

Despite the slightly dated data referenced to during the course of the text, the material discussed by Ehrenreich is even more relevant in today's economy.

Rarely do I ever read something that I actually end up hating after one chapter. However, this book was one of the few that does not get a good review from me. I found almost everything about the way this book was written to be absolutely frustrating and downright annoying. The way the information is presented does not fit the content and the author herself came across as conceited and arrogant. There were also parts of this book that were just completely irrelevant to the content and had I been Ms. Ehrenreich's editor I would have had them removed because they detracted from the actual content.

The idea of this experiment, for a lack of a better word, is a novel one and I admire her for actually going through with it. Nevertheless, when she compiled this book far too many parts of it completely bothered the reader. She makes references to her college level education and her PhD as if these things actually matter when working a minimum wage job.

For the sake of keeping this short all I can say is that I was sorely disappointed in this book, as was the rest of my Modern U.S. History class. It could have been a lot better.

This was an enjoyable book to read. Simple and to the point. Barbara really got down into the trenches with America's low paid employees.
She experienced their everyday routines and the headache of stretching their incomes, and gives some insight into the rules and personalities of their boss's attitudes.

One reason I am uncomfortable with some people in the publishing industry is that I am from a different class than they are. And I don't mean that the way people might think.

Only somebody very self-satisfied with her own status, socially, intellectually and economically, would have written this book in the manner it is written. Many readers, particularly the tens of thousands of college sociology or first-year English students to whom the book is assigned, won't get how ironic and insulting the introduction is (if they read it). There's simply no way to make one of these insider publisher lunches sound like anything other than what it is, a greedy conversation about ego and money. The project, and the book, begins with an arrogant and condescending scheme made to sound somehow "brave" or "noble" -- but only in the eyes of somebody who'd consider working at WalMart, as a waitress at Dennys, or as a cleaning person to be a terrifying prospect. Think about that -- somebody does have to work at WalMart. We can't eat at Dennys if nobody waits tables there. People are willing to pay to have their houses cleaned and it is work that many have done over the years to support themselves and their families.

Bottom line, this author is far too self-satisfied, and has the typical successful "author's ego," to write an effective book about real people who are struggling to get by. It doesn't matter what she says. This book was meant to espouse a political philosophy, and it was meant to embarrass major corporations or even small employers who treat and pay their employees poorly. In the process it made all of the people covered into ciphers - often she didn't even bother to mention the people's names and seldom got into too many details about her co-workers. It's unwise to humanize people, I guess - but I know better.

I am a writer. It's clear that this author can't humanize the people who truly work at these low-wage jobs, because it isn't in her. To this author, "ideas" and "political convictions" are more important than people.

And that is the value discussion here. Students are largely taught that political decisions will solve people's problems. They are told to read this book, despite the fact that the author can barely be bothered to name many of her co-workers, and as the book goes on, is less- and less- interested in them than in documenting the little slights she endured along the way, and minor hardships (pee in a cup, take stupid test, get treated like you might steal the merchandise, hurt feet, walking to/from work - IMAGINE THAT!).

A better book for students to read to make them think about values, culture, and materialism is Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. That story, by a writer of infinitely more insight, talent and empathy, telling about the amazing journey and thoughts of Christopher McCandless, will give a different view of the world.

This is the basic circumstance: When people give up control of their minds and lives to any ideology, they lose the most precious things they have: their individuality and right to self-determination. It is not that WalMart (Dennys, Merry Maids, etc.) are, or are not evil and must be shut down and combated. If you truly think your life-purpose is best-served by ranting against any big corporation, or if you think "political philosophy" takes the place of experiencing life, then what have you learned? In which world can you name any activity where you appreciate and have benefited from any outside organization (government, employer) telling you what to do and how to do it? At best, there are things where we all know we need to follow the same rules if we want to participate.

I think this book is actively harmful to people working at lower-wage jobs. I think it dehumanizes them and uses them as pawns. The complaints of the author about her own issues such as peeing in a cup or having an insensitive boss who didn't care whether she was at work or not, are so trivial compared to -- victims of crime, victims of sexual harassment, the laid-off, the injured-on-the-job, and so-on.

But that's the thing, isn't it? That is a value system. Where every individual person is dehumanized except the powerful person trying to tell others' what to say, think or so.

Think for yourself. Don't take your "wisdom" from an arrogant semi-intellectual who couldn't even spend 3 weeks on any one of these jobs before quitting.

I think that this book is a must reead for those who are trying figure out if they should go to college or not. It give a very good picture of how it really is when you do not have higher education.

Barbara Ehrenreich took on the ambitious task of going undercover as a low-wage worker. She wrote this book to explain how people who work for minimum wage get by in America. However, I found this book to be unrealistic, anecdotal, and pessimistic.
Barbara Ehrenreich is an acclaimed writer for her books and articles in magazines such as Time and The New Republic. She got the idea for this book during lunch with her editor. They were wondering how people could live on minimum wage, and they decided that going undercover would be a good way to answer the question.
The first job that Barbara took on was as a waitress in Florida. She received just $2.43 an hour plus tips, and she found it very hard to live. She took on two jobs for a short period of time, but she had to drop one because it was extremely physically taxing. She got overwhelmed with keeping up rent, and one day, she got up and left for Maine. In Maine, she worked as a housekeeper on weekdays and at a nursing home during the weekends. The housing situation was probably the best here, but she had to work hard to make a living. As a housekeeper, she was constantly in pain and undergoing strenuous work. One woman who was pregnant and had a broken ankle had to continue working so she could have a roof over her head. The management in Maine disgusted Barbara. Barbara also worked at Wal-Mart in Minnesota, and she found the working conditions to be very poor. The housing situation was very difficult in the region, and Barbara quit when she couldn't find an apartment.
This book really helped me to value the importance of education and acknowledged the problems with low-wage jobs. On the other hand, I do not think that the author accomplished the initial point of her book. Barbara used a lot of sarcasm and had a pessimistic tone often in the book. She focused more on the poor quality of her jobs, rather than the economic aspects and how she financially made a living. Her tone can be taken as offensive in some parts of the book, especially when she made references to religion and abortion, which are both sensitive topics to many. Overall, the book was a good idea, and had a good message, but the tone in which it was written was not satisfactory.

This book has a very promising premise, one that many middle- or upper-class people living in the United States never examine: what life is like for those trying to survive on minimum-wage salaries. The author travels from city to city, going through the process of trying to put down roots, and dealing with the difficulty in starting a new life, wrestling especially with the question of how to get a job without a permanent address, and how to find affordable housing when she doesn't yet have a paycheck.

Quickly the author learns that it is nearly impossible for her to survive anywhere on a single job, yet she also finds out that she simply doesn't have the necessary stamina to work more than one job at a time. It is furthermore a nightmare of scheduling to try to find two jobs that don't overlap their hours.

I found this book maddening; I was infuriated at the fact that those working the jobs alongside the author couldn't seem to get ahead, and the ways in which they were taken advantage of by their employers, as in the withholding of a first paycheck from the employees who desperately needed that money for rent or food.

The other maddening part of this book was the fact that there didn't seem to be any solution to this problem of poverty. I was left with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness on finishing this book, horrified at the thought that so many people are living in such dire circumstances, one step away from homelessness and hunger.

Although the author is up-front about the fact that her experience won't be truly authentic, in that she has financial and social resources to fall back on in her real life, I was put off by the fact that she would smoke marijuana shortly before applying for jobs she should have known would require a drug test. With all of the other comforts she was willing to give up for her story, it seems like she would have refrained from this behavior that had the potential to completely sabotage her experiment.

Overall, this book gave me a great deal to think about, and made me appreciate my relative financial security all the more.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It is very eloquently written and is easy to become enthralled with. Personally, I am hard to please in the world of published literature but when I sat down to read this book, I found myself not wanting to stop. The way Ehrenreich conveys the world of minimum wage really gives the reader a good understanding of their lives. When reading, it is inevitable that one is overcome with a feeling of intense empathy for the characters of the book. Not only is this book interesting to read but, it is full of information that is relevant in today's society, especially with the economic crisis. After reading this book, I find it hard to go to a resturaunt or hotel without thinking about the strenuous labor that the hundreds of workers put in to make many of our middle to upper class lives an ounce better. Ehrenreich's brave step into what seems like another world was a step that needed to be taken. From her hardships and experiences we can learn a lot. Everyone could benefit from reading this book. I give it 4 stars.

Ehrenreich paints a decidedly unique picture of minimum wage living, and through such an angle, she really expresses this situation well. She didn't simply analyze existing statistics; Ehrenreich went out and actually experienced what it is like to be a waitress, maid, Wal-Mart employee, and "dietary aid," as the job is so affectionately known. However, she does this with the eye of a PhD and the political mindset of a decidedly non-mainstream person. As I read, I constantly found myself more interested in the life of the author than the one she was temporary living. That aside, once one reads this book, one will never think about minimum-wage work and the struggles that accompany it in the same light again. Ehrenreich shatters the common philosophy held between the more afluent that people on minimum-wage are lazy and are only poor because they lack work ethic. From what she says in her book, this could not be more incorrect. Often, it is the poor that are forced to work the longest hours, in the most unwanted, demeaning occupations. Furthermore, it is not work ethic that does them in, it is our society's need to serve the upper and middle classes that lowers wages and benefits and increases workload.

This inability to excell in a world ruled by the rich is a constant thorughout all of her jobs, regardless of place. In Key West, for example, Ehrenreich manages to live in a trailer, however her co-diner-employees are forced into long-term, crampt motel rooms, their own cars, and communative living. From this, she brings up another difficulty encountered by the poor: it is near impossible to save up enough money to provide for a deposit and first month's rent, so many are only able to barely afford "pay-as-you-go" housing. A similar idea also comes up when Ehrenreich goes to be a maid in Maine. When she learns that other maid services pay more, she asks her coworkers why they don't switch, and she finds that they cannot afford to switch jobs, because the work or so without pay is an impossibility on current salaries. Overall, this book can teach one a lot about how much we take for granted our comfortable jobs and live our lives as if it is all this easy.

I can't believe I read through the entire book. the only consolation was that I filled the sidebars with angry comments. the whole tone of this book was bitter and angry. SHE was angry to be poor not her workmates. THEY were rather happy with life and full of hope looking towards a better future. Those of you who read it and bought into it, I advise you to read it again. pay attention to the tone of the book. Observe who the author is, and what her outlook in life is like. then, imagine youself in the situation of these people she writes about. than think to yourself if you would be as angry as she is. I am sure you wouldn't if you are well adjusted.
The whole book was a sream of ranting and raving: I just love the way she compares a husband to a dog at one point, and the way she talks about pubic hair in the shower. a real OPTIMIST I gotta say.

This is my second reading of this book. When I read it for the first time, I was overwhelmed with compassion for the minimum-wage earners, looking at them through the eyes of the author, who has herself gotten several of the minimum-wage jobs for the purpose of learning how one survives on the income afforded by such jobs. Even during the first reading, I noticed that the author could have done much better with the money management. She has set in advance the financial formula by which she was going to live. This included living alone in some sort of an apartment. This was a big mistake. She could have saved tons of money by renting a room in somebody's home or sharing the housing. I have lived nicely by such a formula during my two-year sabbatical in a high-cost living area (San Diego), and my salary was definitely way above the minimum wage. Actually, I paid much less for the housing than the author did in any of her accommodations. In my second reading of this book I have confirmed that the author's description of the minimum-wage living definitely calls for the increase of the minimum wage. However, I had some problems with the way the author was looking at the jobs she was involved in. She, I believe, looked at them mostly as jobs that somebody would take just to survive, and because they could not get any other jobs. This may be true, but only to the point. I believe that there are professionals in every job. By professionals I mean people who are dedicated to their work, who excel, who love their work and who are fulfilled at the end of the day in a sense that their job mattered. I think that they are waitresses, nurses' aids, maids and the Wal-Mart workers who may belong to this category. The author complains about the dirty toilets she had to clean. The fact is that cleaning is a job that gives one an immediate gratification. There was something dirty, and you made it clean. You can see an immediate difference. Once I was on an overseas flight and the sink in the bathroom was filthy. I just cleaned it. I used soap, paper towels, and made it nice and clean. Why? I was puzzled by my own action. Initially I thought that I cleaned it since I did not want the passenger who visited the bathroom after me to think that I made it dirty. Then I realized that I cleaned it because I like clean things. The most pathetic of all the maids in the book, the young woman who wanted to get her work done although she was injured, was the best professional. The author could not understand this and has attributed it to some sort of unsupported claims that the young woman's husband would beat her up if she did not work. The young women was proud that she was a member of the house maids team, she was proud that she was able to pass the entrance test, which the author, who has a PhD, considered a joke, but the semi-literate young women did not. More trouble for the author. She quit her job as a waitress when there was a crisis in the restaurant, too many tables to be served and the kitchen people were behind. She just walked out. She should have stayed through the crisis (which she apparently left to the others to sort-out) and should have quit in an appropriate manner, when her replacement was hired. The same thing occurred in her Wal-Mart job. The company has paid her for an entire day of training, and she just walked out. I would say that one of the reasons for the low pay is directly related to the people walking out as they please. She complains about the mandatory drug testing at some of the jobs she took, while simultaneously acknowledging her own use of marihuana. I find this insulting since it implies that these jobs are so insignificant that people could do them just fine even if under the influence. Having voiced all this criticism, I must say also the positive things. The author was very brave to do this experiment, and both she and her readers have learned a lot from it. We have seen her view, which may be one-sided in many respects, but still extremely valuable. She was honest with herself, she did the best she could, her biases are her own, and we learn as much about her from the book as we learn about her minimum-wage colleagues.
In conclusion, it is a valuable book to read, and extremely well-written. The main problem for me is that the author does not fully understand that people can have pride in their work no matter what their work is.

This book is fantastic! I was required to read it for a Sociology class and I am really happy that the Professor picked this one. I hope that more people will read this book so they can start looking closer at the invisible side of the service industry. I would love to have this be required reading in high schools so teenagers could learn about this before they go out into the world.

This book opened my eyes to how people really try to live! I look at workers in so called low paying jobs, quite differently. I see them.

First, for those reviewers who accuse Ehrenreich, the author, of being a commie, or a socialist, or any other familiar devil term, they either haven't read the book or have no understanding of the US and the principles for which we stand. Many stalwarts of the left have acknowledged that we are probably the freest country ever, to paraphrase one. And I have argued, to the chagrin of some, that we are far more "populist" than most any other country. In that populist tradition, Ehrenreich wrote this valuable volume.

For the one who commented on the author's admitted drug use, well, that's a non-issue.

And, as to those who accuse Ehrenreich of arrogance, you may be showing more of your own colors than hers. Have you been able to examine the plight of the working poor? Could you express it as eloquently as she did?

I listened to a recorded version of this classic. The jury's still out as to my view of that "new" medium. But it certainly gives me time to "read" something for which I might not otherwise have time.

Others have stated the book's premises: The author is a journalist with a Ph.D. in biology. She has a noted reputation among the educated. She talked with the editor of Harper's about investigating that plight to which I referred, and he suggested she "join them."

Ehrenreich starts with her explanation of her set of rules. She'd calculated how much she needed to live, and for what little she'd be willing to settle for in terms of wage.

She started as a waitress in some restaurants near where she lived. Among the first things that astonished her--something about with I' ve been expressing concern since it hit--was the cost of housing relative to what her fellow waitresses were making. Some lived in their cars, others were able to barely survive by sharing a place with a boyfriend or other family member.

Another issue she raised was hierarchy: what purpose do some of the "managers" serve except to harass the employees? (Where I used to work, a place I left in good terms which I still share with colleagues and managers, I wondered, "How many managers does it take to change a light bulb?") We somehow assume that such a hierarchy needs to exist to ensure that work is done. Ehrenreich concludes that that's not true.

She also worked at a nursing home. She had some heart warming stories about demented seniors and their dubious survival.

She proceeded to Maine where she worked for a maid's service--which charged customers $25 an hour while paying the maids $6.65 an hour. She was flabbergasted at how some of their customers had cameras available to them to ensure that the maids weren't stealing anything and that they were "doing their job" (for barely a quarter of what the maid service was charging the customer!) And in the case of one of the service's customers, a rather buxom woman who lived in a suburban Portland mansion barely fit under a desk to make sure that the maids got every single speck of dust!

Then Ehrenreith went to Minnesota, for reasons she wasn't able to discern, and "interviewed" for jobs at a hardware establishment and at Wal-Mart. She chose to work for the latter as the former's 11 hour shifts she wouldn't put up with. But, what with the extremely limited housing market in Minnesota, that gave her several other subjects to cover, including economic statistics, of dubious credibility, and housing availability and prices. Her descriptions of where she had to love were some of the wittiest portions of the text.

My appreciation for the author's eloquence is immense. Again, some accuse her of being arrogant. Well, she was in a position to investigate the conditions in which she reports. Should Nelly Bly not have reported on the asylums of yesteryear because she was demonstrably NOT insane? Ehrenreich had a great deal of sympathy with her co-workers, to few of whom she admitted her real role, that of an investigative author. And she asked, "Why did they put up with it?" She concluded that not only did other jobs in the area not really pay much, if any, more. But many of them had transportation problems: How do you get to work 40 minutes away if you don't have a car?

There were other issues in the employment process, especially drug tests and employment "tests." We are NOT unwilling to succumb to these foolish drug tests while there is no evidence that they do any good? (She refers to one in which the government spent literally $70,000 per testee!) And, something she doesn't even mention, they're hopelessly inaccurate. She does mention that heroin and cocaine leave your system in a few days while marijuana, the least threating of the substances, can remain in your system for weeks. And there's no test for alcohol. I took a personality test a number of years ago to which, I admitted to the manager (who hired me) that most of my honest answers would have been "that depends." And "Skeptical Inquirer" had an article a few years ago which described that these tests haven't even been created by social scientists. They're at best a means of "management" establishing itself as of a higher caste.

Oh, and she does cover the issue of health insurance: none of the jobs had that benefit. So many of her colleagues had to grin and bear it through a number of health threats. For that fact, we Americans should be collectively ashamed of ourselves.

It's hard for me to express greater appreciation for this book. It may bust some American mythology, particularly that if you work hard enough you can make it here. (Not if you're paying 3/4 of your income for a dump to live in!) She summarizes the book with fact that the many--MILLIONS!--of working poor are making enormous sacrifices so that the rest of us can be "comfortable." I repeat MILLIONS. This isn't a minor problem. And the economic statistics to which she refers are dated. They've become substantially worse. (Housing prices are only one!)

I've wanted to read this book for years and finally got around to it. There's so, so much more I could say about it, but read it yourself. I truly believe it should be required reading in every high school and every college. It's NOT an ideological issue, but a very real issue of which too many of are sadly unaware. Read it and weep.

If you are interested in reading someone who 'walked the walk' in Sociology, this book is a must have. It is listed on Leadership and Sociology must reads and for good reason. Definitely worth every penny of the price.

As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. However, in Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich presents her particular experiences as though they are scientific experiments that lead to one unarguable conclusion -- that the minimum wage must be raised.

However, as scientific experiments, her experiences leave a lot to be desired. In the first place, Ehrenreich is palpably biased. She is a socialist, and while I don't think that being a socialist makes a person a poor journalist, it may tend to color one's interpretation of experiences in the workplace. I think it's fair to say that someone with a different worldview (let's say a capitalist) could have had the exact same experiences that Ehrenreich did on the job, but walk away with a completely different conclusion.

Secondly, she seems to be arguing that wages are too low; that, as she states early on, we cannot expect people to live on the current minimum wage. However, the vast bulk of her write-up is not about the *economics* of her situation, but on other aspects of work that she finds distasteful. She talks about how degrading it is, to be expected to clean a floor on one's knees; or how she resents the drug-testing that is part of employee screening for certain jobs; or how working hard has a tendency to make a person sweat, which is unpleasant. Whether these things are good, bad, or otherwise is besides the point, really. If the minimum wage were raised, some house-cleaners would still be required to clean floors on their hands and knees, many jobs would still require drug-testing, and working hard would still lead to sweat. Ehrenreich seems to resent these jobs, not because they don't pay "enough" to meet some sort of standard that she deems necessary, but because they exist at all. While describing her stint as a maid, she makes an aside to rail against the fact that people want to keep their homes as sterile as a motel room or soap opera set. She hates the entire idea that some people would pay others to clean their homes, and this anger is besides the fact of the pay-scale involved, because she finds the *work* itself degrading. She hates the relationship of "master"/"servant," and brags how she, herself, has never hired help in that fashion.

Of course, if she had hired help, then she could have paid them a "fair wage" or a "living wage" or whatever her socialist conscience demands of her -- which would be a nice deal, presumably, for the person she so employed -- but she doesn't do it because she hates the idea of people working in those kinds of jobs, at all. And so, as I say, most of the book is angry at the jobs she describes, not because of the economics involved, but because they exist. I find it hard to imagine her paradise, in which, apparently, no one works at jobs that she would personally find unpleasant. Would there be garbage collectors? Would there be nurses in retirement homes, cleaning bed pans? Raising the minimum wage would do nothing to eliminate the fact of these jobs, or the degrading experiences that Ehrenreich spends so much space in her book lamenting.

When it comes to analyizing the actual economics of her situations, Ehrenreich never quite goes all the way, and her experiences don't quite measure up to reality. Her gimmick of staying a month in one place to see if she can collect enough income for the next month's rent is... an interesting one, but it's flawed in a few ways. In the first place, she often spends a bit of time -- especially in the beginning -- in a job hunt. So, she winds up not working the entire month. There are other times when she decides to quit from a job, and thereby loses time there. It would be one thing to see whether a full month's pay is enough to support a person, or not, but Ehrenreich's approach doesn't demonstrate this one way or the other. She also limits (and thereby lengthens) her job search, and her economic possibilities, by refusing to investigate jobs which she deems unsuitable for one reason or another. In her first stay, in Key West, she opts not to pursue an opportunity in telemarketing because of "personality conflict."

Also, it just isn't the case that the true "working poor" are always new to a town, a situation, a living arrangement, etc. Yes -- they might be in a situation similar to Ehrenreich's for some amount of time, but eventually people have spent time in a locale. Eventually, they become accustomed to certain tasks, and then proficient. The first month of being a waitress might be quite the ordeal -- especially to a person accustomed to a writer's lifestyle. But people are adaptable, and if given enough time doing it, I suspect that some of the tasks she found so repellant at first would eventually have become second nature to her. Because every new task is so, well, new to Ehrenreich, it all leaves the strongest possible taste in her mouth. Real people in real situations grow tougher over time, and less sensitive to these kinds of tasks. Real people also often have a host of mechanisms to supplement their own efforts, economically. They work multiple jobs; they have roommates; they rely on the personal charity of friends and family; etc. I have personally made use of all of these tactics, at one time or another, and I currently have three roommates -- together, we share a house in Hollywood, at a price per person of *less* than some of the rents Ehrenreich took in her book. Ehrenreich rejects most of these out of hand, though she does make a couple of efforts at working two jobs, and seems to feel that having roommates is an atrocity of the capitalist system. One example she raises is that of a female co-worker who has a male roommate, and has had a couple of unwanted advances. Well, right -- sometimes roommates are inconvenient and/or pesky, but that fact of life will neither disintegrate nor change whether we raise the minimum wage or achieve some sort of Marxist utopia.

Ehrenreich bothers to describe her single-person dwellings, and deplore the conditions there. All of her bedrooms are "small," whatever that means. At one point, she complains that a prospective unit doesn't even have a television. Is a television now a necessity on the order of food, clothing and shelter?

Is the grand conclusion that Ehrenreich comes to that being poor is less desirable than being wealthy? That it is difficult to move into a new city, without family or friends, without marketable skills, and immediately secure a wonderful place to live and a perfect-fit job? That not having money is, at times, a real inconvenience? Ehrenreich doesn't want to scrub other peoples' toilets, and she wants a large living room -- I get that -- but this is a far cry from the purported goal of her book, which was to demonstrate that a person is unable to make rent by working these sorts of unskilled jobs.

Yes, the unskilled must rely on other stratagems to provide all that they need, at times. They must sometimes have roommates, and friends, and family, and work extra hard, or do those jobs that others do not want to do. It has always been thus, in every society, and stretching back through all of time. Entry level jobs are termed so because they are not designed to be life-long careers. People need to be able to stay in a position and promote, or learn skills for a more involved/better paying job, or find another strategy to get through life, like marrying a better-providing partner, etc. Ehrenreich sees it as an indictment of the system that a person cannot take an entry level position and stay there for a lifetime, without roommates, without personal charity, without advancement or education, and be in most respects just as well-off as anyone else. Her idea is flawed on its face, and reminds me of a joke:

A man is caught in a flood, but refuses to evacuate because he is a devout religionist, and believes that God will rescue him. Neighbors come, insisting that the man leave, but he sends them off, saying that God will save him. The Fire Department comes, but the man sends them away, sure that God will save him. Finally, a rescue helicopter shouts down with a megaphone, saying that they're dropping a ladder -- the man's last chance to get away -- but the man waves it away, declaring that God will save him.

The man dies, and appears before God. The man is incensed, and demands to know why God had forsaken him in his hour of need. God says, "Forsaken you? What are you talking about? Who do you think sent the neighbors, firemen & chopper!?"

Ehrenreich determines that she will make no use of any of the opportunites our society presents for a person to get by, and ultimately advance, from entry-level work and poverty... and then declares the difficulties she experiences to be proof that the system is broken. But the truth is, the system only works for us when we are seriously intent on making it work. Ehrenreich did not want the system to work. Instead, she wanted articles that supported her socialst ideology, and in that -- as scientists with pre-determined agendas often do -- she got what she was after.

There are many other reasons why this book is flawed. Ehrenreich has an unbearable self-righteousness that soaks through the book like a sponge cake, and her contempt for anyone of the "owning class" is hateful, and sad. But my review has gone on too long already, and the central reason why this book does not work is that, at its core, it does not in fact do what it claims that it does. It does not prove what it sets out to prove. It provides anecdotes, but ultimately does not deliver the data.

As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. However, in Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich presents her particular experiences as though they are scientific experiments that lead to one unarguable conclusion -- that the minimum wage must be raised.

However, as scientific experiments, her experiences leave a lot to be desired. In the first place, Ehrenreich is palpably biased. She is a socialist, and while I don't think that being a socialist makes a person a poor journalist, it may tend to color one's interpretation of experiences in the workplace. I think it's fair to say that someone with a different worldview (let's say a capitalist) could have had the exact same experiences that Ehrenreich did on the job, but walk away with a completely different conclusion.

Secondly, she seems to be arguing that wages are too low; that, as she states early on, we cannot expect people to live on the current minimum wage. However, the vast bulk of her write-up is not about the *economics* of her situation, but on other aspects of work that she finds distasteful. She talks about how degrading it is, to be expected to clean a floor on one's knees; or how she resents the drug-testing that is part of employee screening for certain jobs; or how working hard has a tendency to make a person sweat, which is unpleasant. Whether these things are good, bad, or otherwise is besides the point, really. If the minimum wage were raised, some house-cleaners would still be required to clean floors on their hands and knees, many jobs would still require drug-testing, and working hard would still lead to sweat. Ehrenreich seems to resent these jobs, not because they don't pay "enough" to meet some sort of standard that she deems necessary, but because they exist at all. While describing her stint as a maid, she makes an aside to rail against the fact that people want to keep their homes as sterile as a motel room or soap opera set. She hates the entire idea that some people would pay others to clean their homes, and this anger is besides the fact of the pay-scale involved, because she finds the *work* itself degrading. She hates the relationship of "master"/"servant," and brags how she, herself, has never hired help in that fashion.

Of course, if she had hired help, then she could have paid them a "fair wage" or a "living wage" or whatever her socialist conscience demands of her -- which would be a nice deal, presumably, for the person she so employed -- but she doesn't do it because she hates the idea of people working in those kinds of jobs, at all. And so, as I say, most of the book is angry at the jobs she describes, not because of the economics involved, but because they exist. I find it hard to imagine her paradise, in which, apparently, no one works at jobs that she would personally find unpleasant. Would there be garbage collectors? Would there be nurses in retirement homes, cleaning bed pans? Raising the minimum wage would do nothing to eliminate the fact of these jobs, or the degrading experiences that Ehrenreich spends so much space in her book lamenting.

When it comes to analyizing the actual economics of her situations, Ehrenreich never quite goes all the way, and her experiences don't quite measure up to reality. Her gimmick of staying a month in one place to see if she can collect enough income for the next month's rent is... an interesting one, but it's flawed in a few ways. In the first place, she often spends a bit of time -- especially in the beginning -- in a job hunt. So, she winds up not working the entire month. There are other times when she decides to quit from a job, and thereby loses time there. It would be one thing to see whether a full month's pay is enough to support a person, or not, but Ehrenreich's approach doesn't demonstrate this one way or the other. She also limits (and thereby lengthens) her job search, and her economic possibilities, by refusing to investigate jobs which she deems unsuitable for one reason or another. In her first stay, in Key West, she opts not to pursue an opportunity in telemarketing because of "personality conflict."

Also, it just isn't the case that the true "working poor" are always new to a town, a situation, a living arrangement, etc. Yes -- they might be in a situation similar to Ehrenreich's for some amount of time, but eventually people have spent time in a locale. Eventually, they become accustomed to certain tasks, and then proficient. The first month of being a waitress might be quite the ordeal -- especially to a person accustomed to a writer's lifestyle. But people are adaptable, and if given enough time doing it, I suspect that some of the tasks she found so repellant at first would eventually have become second nature to her. Because every new task is so, well, new to Ehrenreich, it all leaves the strongest possible taste in her mouth. Real people in real situations grow tougher over time, and less sensitive to these kinds of tasks. Real people also often have a host of mechanisms to supplement their own efforts, economically. They work multiple jobs; they have roommates; they rely on the personal charity of friends and family; etc. I have personally made use of all of these tactics, at one time or another, and I currently have three roommates -- together, we share a house in Hollywood, at a price per person of *less* than some of the rents Ehrenreich took in her book. Ehrenreich rejects most of these out of hand, though she does make a couple of efforts at working two jobs, and seems to feel that having roommates is an atrocity of the capitalist system. One example she raises is that of a female co-worker who has a male roommate, and has had a couple of unwanted advances. Well, right -- sometimes roommates are inconvenient and/or pesky, but that fact of life will neither disintegrate nor change whether we raise the minimum wage or achieve some sort of marxist utopia.

Ehrenreich bothers to describe her single-person dwellings, and deplore the conditions there. At one point, she complains that a prospective unit doesn't even have a television.

Is the grand conclusion that Ehrenreich comes to that being poor is less desirable than being wealthy? That not having money is, at times, a real inconvenience? Ehrenreich doesn't want to scrub other peoples' toilets, and she wants a large living room -- I get that -- but this is a far cry from the purported goal of her book, which was to demonstrate that a person is unable to make rent by working these sorts of unskilled jobs.

Yes, the unskilled must rely on other strategems to provide all that they need, at times. They must sometimes have roommates, and friends, and family, and work extra hard, or do those jobs that others do not want to do. It has always been thus, in every society, and stretching back through all of time. Entry level jobs are termed so because they are not designed to be life-long careers. People need to be able to stay in a position and promote, or learn skills for a more involved/better paying job, or find another strategy to get through life, like marrying a better-providing partner, etc. Ehrenreich sees it as an indictment of the system that a person cannot take an entry level position and stay there for a lifetime, without roommates, without personal charity, without advancement or education, and be in most respects just as well-off as anyone else. Her idea is flawed on its face, and reminds me of a joke:

A man is caught in a flood, but refuses to evacuate because he is a devout religionist, and believes that God will rescue him. Neighbors come, insisting that the man leave, but he sends them off, saying that God will save him. The Fire Department comes, but the man sends them away, sure that God will save him. Finally, a rescue helicopter shouts down with a megaphone, saying that they're dropping a ladder -- the man's last chance to get away -- but the man waves it away, declaring that God will save him.

The man dies, and appears before God. The man is incensed, and demands to know why God had forsaken him in his hour of need. God says, "Forsaken you? What are you talking about? Who do you think sent the neighbors, firemen & chopper!?"

Ehrenreich determines that she will make no use of any of the opportunites our society presents for a person to get by, and ultimately advance, from entry-level work and poverty... and then declares the difficulties she experiences to be proof that the system is broken. But the truth is, the system only works for us when we are seriously intent on making it work. Ehrenreich did not want the system to work. Instead, she wanted articles that supported her socialst ideology, and in that -- as scientists with pre-determined agendas often do -- she got what she was after.

The book NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA by Barbara Ehrenreich should be required reading for all Americans. Ehrenreich embarks on an experiment, which she documents in the chapters of this book, to see if she can pay the bills on full-time (plus) work as a low skilled worker in three different communities, Key West; Portland, Maine; and Minneapolis. It turns out that in some areas she can barely make ends meet, and in one she cannot manage it at all. This book makes the difficult lives of the working poor very, very real to the reader.

In order to investigate this question, Ehrenreich sets some rules for herself, that she will have a small "start-up" fund and enough money for a car. She will have to pay all her bills, including rent, out of the salary of any job she can get with no resume to speak of, seeking out positions as a low-skilled or unskilled laborer in the $7 per hour range.

Ehrenreich is a waitress in Key West for her first endeavor. She finds a place to live 30 miles from where she works (many of her colleagues at her waitress job live in cars or with others in trailers). For her second adventure, she cleans houses for a national maid franchise in Portland, Maine, and adds a part-time weekend job as a dietary assistant at a nursing home. In her third try, she takes a job for Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, but can never find a place to live in the Twin Cities metro area that she can afford (she ends up living in a Comfort Inn until she aborts the experiment due to exceeding her budget).

Throughout the book, Ehrenreich examines the industries in which she works, the policies and procedures of the companies she works for, and writes compelling of the day-to-day struggles she deals with as a low-wage earner who works full-time (or more than) in the U.S. economy. She researches drug testing for major employers (her experience with this phenomenon is with Wal-Mart), food assistance for those under the poverty line and other such related issues as she encounters them. In the Minneapolis chapter, she follows the housing costs-wage ration in depth, as she discovers that she cannot afford rents in this area on her full-time, physically demanding hourly salary at Wal-Mart.

Overall, the reader can take in fully how completely demanding and utterly destabilizing life is for the working poor. Ehrenreich had no financial cushion for any medical situation, let alone an emergency, or any added expense, though she worked more than 40 hours per week sometimes. This book really makes the point that for those who live in a higher income bracket, we enjoy much at the expense of those who have little or no economic power due to their "low-skilled" classifications. The humiliations and degradations Ehrenreich and her colleagues had to endure from employers, landlords and "helping professionals" are truly awakening, and upsetting. This book caused this reader to question how her life is supported and financed literally on the backs of the powerless who provide the manpower to propel much of our economy.

I strongly recommend this book.

There are undeniably accounts of heroically lifting oneself out of the deluges of poverty but in the case of the average worker each day is the same as the last, earning barely enough to manage their meager finances. It is not the case, as many would like to think, that the harder you work the more benefits you will reap; the American Dream is unfortunately unobtainable to even the hardest workers America has to offer. Ehrenreich discusses her personal experiences with poverty while attempting to work her way into a comfortable living routine. However, when faced with the struggles of working in a low wage job - mentally, physically and financially - she discovers that life is not as cut and dry as an outsider would optimistically think. The harsh truth of poverty in America is commonly ignored and shuffled into the corner; Ehrenreich's book outstandingly highlights the facts through research and experience (both hers and those of coworkers and acquaintances she met along her journey). This book absolutely needs to be read and (hopefully) appreciated to its fullest. The situation of American poverty has been pointed out and now we must recognize our ability to enact change throughout our society.

I had to buy this book for a college class I am taking. Once receiving the book, I didn't even wait for it to be assigned, I read it and loved it. The author writing is unique and I loved the way she got in touch with her research. I have a list of friends waiting to read the book, they have to wait til my class is over...

One of my favorite books. I have read it multiple times, both for class and for leisure. It makes you wonder how the richest nation in the world has so many individuals living on, below, or near the poverty line, barely making it by. Read it and learn more about how much we are in need of policy reform.

As I sat down with this book, which I had been wanting to read for a long time, I wondered whether it would be worthwhile to review a book seven years old that is based on observations and data almost a decade old. After all, a lot of economic history has happened since the late 1990s--the dot.com bubble burst, we went into a recession in 2001 that featured a two- to three-year "jobless recovery," we entered into two wars that helped us to win back the huge budget deficits that we had lost in the 1990s, several of the nation's big corporations fought for the title of "largest and meanest bankruptcy in U.S. history," and the "excessive exuberance" in the housing market (fueled by subprime lending) ran out of gas, probably assuring us of an economic downturn, if not a recession, in the coming year. In short, I wondered whether a book written in the heady days of the "new economy" (remember "the business cycle is dead, and we have killed it"?) would still be relevant.

I needn't have worried (I didn't really). The story Ehrenreich tells is still a sobering read, and it has, in fact, developed overtones in the ensuing years that resonate even more strongly today. The impetus for the book was that the author decided in 1998, at the urging of Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham, to seek employment at the lowest levels of the economic spectrum and then come back and report on it. Thus, for the next two years she worked as a waitress in Key West, Florida, as a house cleaner in Portland, Maine, and as a Wal-Mart "associate" in Minneapolis, taking nothing with her but a few clothes and a laptop on which to record her impressions. (Actually, she used her own car during the first assignment, but thereafter she used rental cars.)

At this level of the economy, Ehrenreich writes, there are really two serious problems that must be addressed: finding an affordable place to live, and finding employment to pay for it. These issues are related, but they are also distinct, she says. One can work while living out of one's car or temporarily with friends or family, and one can take more than one job to make ends meet. During her sojourn, Ehrenreich finds that at the wage rates paid to waitresses, maids, and retail clerks nearly all workers have to do both at some point, unless they have spouses who contribute substantial income. And even then, if there are kids, the issues can be just as acute.

For example, while employed at Wal-Mart, she becomes acquainted with a woman who works six hours a day at the store for $7.00 per hour and then an eight-hour shift at a local factory for $9.00 an hour. As for housing, she finds that many of the working poor are forced to live in motels, at exorbitant rates, because they cannot save up the deposit and first month's rent for an apartment. Others live in overcrowded lodgings or in rooms with no refrigerators, cooking appliances, air conditioning, etc. (Ehrenreich herself experiences this). And, recall, this is at the peak of the most prosperous decade in the U.S. since the 1950s. The working poor do not benefit from the general prosperity, but they are affected by it--as the "haves" bid up rents in the areas nearest to employment, the poor are forced to move further away. And then the problem of transportation kicks in.

Two themes emerge again and again in Ehrenreich's narrative. The first is the indignities inflicted upon the working poor. From drug testing (which we've all accepted as routine today) to "personality" tests, withholding of employees' first week's pay (which happened to the author twice), the changing of shifts and assignments arbitrarily, and rules that employees cannot talk to one another on the job or leave the building during breaks, the working poor are told in myriad ways that they are the "untouchables of a supposedly caste-free and democratic society."

The second theme is the psychology of poverty. Ehrenreich repeatedly asks herself why her co-workers put up with the low wages, the excessive work, the management browbeating, and the physical and mental stress. She proposes numerous answers, but the gist of it is that the working poor are most often trapped in their jobs. It can be transportation or simply the need to hold onto some sort of job security, however demeaning, deadening, and low-paying. But the author speculates that lasting damage is often done through what she calls "repetitive injury to the soul." Workers eventually feel that they cannot aspire to a better life, much less fight for their dignity.

Our image of the poor has changed--I'm not sure "evolved" is the right word--over the past half century. In 1962, Michael Harrington's book The Other America brought images of the poor to the dooryards of contented Americans coming off the upwardly mobile 1950s. JFK apparently read the book and was moved, but he was too preoccupied with the Cold War and the growing civil rights movement to do anything about it. The book is credited, however, with being one of the influences that culminated in LBJ's War on Poverty. Absent the Vietnam conflict, and if either LBJ or Robert Kennedy had been the next president, much might have been accomplished. LBJ remembered the poverty of his youth, and Kennedy had become sensitized through travels in the south. Instead, the middle class was hammered by stagflation in the 1970s and turned finally to the Happy Warrior, Ronald Reagan, in 1980.

By then, the vision of the poor had changed radically--we had come to see poverty, as Ehrenreich says, as a function of unemployment. The goal was to get the economy going to lift all boats (supply side economics), and workers were admonished to "vote with their feet." No one asked whether working wages were livable wages. The working poor were seen as "unskilled"--probably high school dropouts, people without ambition, alcoholics or drug addicts, etc. In contrast, Ehrenreich found that "there are no unskilled jobs." Every job, she says, requires sophisticated knowledge of one sort or another, both technical and sociological. In addition, the desire of her co-workers to do good work, despite the hardships, impressed her greatly.

Thus, the most important contribution of Ehrenreich's book may be that it shows that the largest percentage of the poor in our midst today are not just invisible fringe elements or uneducated minorities but rather hard-working people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds, with good work ethics, who are caught up in a system that takes advantage of them. That is the difference a half century makes: the poor are no longer simply ignored--they are now actively exploited. The dark generalization that seems inescapable is that the prosperous in our society depend upon the working poor in much the same way that the planters of the pre-Civil War south claimed that they were economically dependent upon the institution of slavery (my thought, not the author's). As Ehrenreich states, the poor keep labor costs down, thereby strengthening bottom lines and keeping stock prices up for the investor class. Drawing an ironic conclusion, she says that the working poor "are in fact the major philanthropists of our society."

Yet, what about changes since the book came out? How are we doing? Not well, actually. In a September 2007 Briefing Paper, the Economic Policy Institute summarized the situation as follows:

* Real wages have been stagnant for most workers in the 2000s, especially since 2003.
* The benefits of increased productivity (producing more with less) have not flowed down. In other words, workers have not shared economically in the productivity gains.
* Wage growth in the 2000s has been highly unequal, with the higher wage groups gaining the most ground.
* Despite low unemployment (i.e., a tight labor market), workers' bargaining power has diminished.
* More downward pressure on wage growth is likely, as productivity growth slows and unemployment increases.

Obviously, we have not yet solved the problem of the working poor.

The second, and less time-bound, contribution of this book is more subtle but equally significant. In American political life, actions in Washington and national and international events receive almost all of the attention. This is justified, but only in part. High-level decision making affects us all. But in a presidential campaign year, particularly, the candidates and the media too often bandy about one-size-fits-all solutions to serious and complex problems. (Perhaps the low point in the presidential debates thus far was when Wolf Blitzer asked the Democratic candidates for a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question "Do you support giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants?") Such rhetoric amounts to little more than incantation, devoid of any real connection to life on the street as most Americans live it. I plan to vote Democratic, but I was dismayed that not one of the candidates had the gumption to tell Blitzer that the question was simply unanswerable with a "Yes" or "No."

The importance of Nickled and Dimed is that it shows that an educated (Ehrenreich holds a Ph.D. in biology) and relatively affluent person can face up to, look closely at, and even experience the daily lives of the working poor in a sensitive and compassionate way, without either turning away or becoming overwhelmed with guilt and accepting platitudes for answers. This is a book that every Democrat should read because it says that we can, indeed, empathize without feeling that we are "soft" on poverty--whatever that might mean. It's time to let the nation know that this is still a vital issue and that it is still on the Democratic Party agenda.

I you have forgotten what it is like getting by on the minimum wage, this is a good first book to start with. Ehrenreich works at various minimum wage jobs for this book and she does a good job explaining some of the mental somersaults these people put up with trying to have a life on a low wage. She talks about the jobs as well as trying to find living arrangements on this meager wage. This is a book version of the TV show "30 days". If you have seen that show, this book is like that.

The part the struck me the hardest was how a co-worker at the local retailer was wondering if a $5.00 shirt was going to be reduced in price again because she couldn't afford it yet. Ehrenreich does a great job explaining how hard the work is for domestic house cleaners. She goes into great detail explaining how scrubbing on your hands and knees is supposed to promote extra cleanliness to the customer while at the same time she is told not to use too hot water even though it won't clean as well if it is not hot enough.

This book left me in a very foul mood after I had read it. I came very close to ending up a minimum wage worker before I was able to earn an education and my ticket out. This book brought back unpleasant memories that I thought I had forgotten.

"Nickle and Dimed" is a very good and fast read. If you do not know of this world, Ehrenreich gives you a glimpse into it and she does not romanticize their plight, although she does seem to cheer them on. There are no heroes here, only desperate people trying to live. It certainly gives you something to think about when you are in the next retail store. Highly Recommended.